Three Plastic Jesii

Friday 4.2.10

Today I went on a camionata, a little walk around town with the rest of the townsfolk. On this camionata we celebrated the 15 sacred somethings in the life of Jesus. We began at the Catholic Church and began walking, all about 150-200 of us with one gigantic speaker being carried by four men with two sticks and one smaller speaker who only needed one man to carry it, down the road to the first “station”. We arrived at the first station after about 100 meters where we stopped and listened to one of the youth read a few paragraphs, which lasted about 3-5 minutes, while we all knelt down on the rocky ground. When the reading was done we all stood up and began walking again, to the tune of a very very badly sung Christian song, another 100 meters where we repeated the exact same process. 15 times this happened. We walked up and down steep hills, all the while looking like frantic antelope being chased by bison on the African plains. We were shuffled so close together, as if to be near the front of the line actually meant one was closer to Jesus himself.

Eventually we arrived back at the Church about 1 hour and a half later where we listened to a review of the 15 stations we had just listened to. We listened to some more really bad music, then everybody stood up and got in a line to do something at the front of the Church. I didn’t know what this was, but I was sure not going to miss out on whatever fun everybody else was having! I got to the front of the church to find three people holding three plastic statues of Jesus, the same statues that led the camionata earlier that day, and people were lining up to kiss them. At this point I didn’t really have much of a choice, so I kissed three plastic Jesuses. Or Jesii. I’m not quite sure anybody has ever used the word Jesus in the plural form before.